“Come ahead up into my room,” Pee-wee said, leading the way, “and I’ll show you some things in the handbook; I’ll show you a woodchuck skin too. I know a lot of things about scouting. Do you know how to tell the time if you’re out in the woods a hundred miles from anywhere?”
“By looking at my watch?” Emerson ventured.
“That shows how much you know about scouting,” Pee-wee said. “Suppose the mainspring should break; then what would you do? You can tell time by a nail if you know how.”
“Well, I’m in for it now,” said Emerson, looking curiously about Pee-wee’s room. “I want to learn all there is.”
“The troop’s just crazy about you,” said Pee-wee. “But anyway, I’m the one that discovered you. All these stones and things, and these cocoons and everything, they all came from up around Temple Camp—I picked ’em up in the woods. Gee whiz, we won’t bother with the radio now, hey? Because they’re having a lecture about agriculture; that man he talks every Wednesday night; he gets through at about nine o’clock and after that to-night there’s a sympathy orchestra——”
“You mean symphony?” Emerson asked.
“Sure, and after that a man’s going to tell about how they catch salmon but anyway what do I care about that? If I have a can opener, that’s all I care about. But anyway, if I didn’t have one it wouldn’t make any difference even if I was in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, because I can use a pointed stone to open a can but if I didn’t have a can of salmon I wouldn’t starve anyway; gee whiz, I wouldn’t starve no matter what.”
It is a pity that the dissertation which Pee-wee gave Emerson on the subject of scouting could not have been broadcasted. He found Emerson a good listener and a likely pupil. The new boy, turning the pages of the handbook thoughtfully, asked questions which showed an intelligent interest and which Pee-wee was sometimes at perplexity to answer. Here was a scout in the making indeed.
At about ten o’clock Pee-wee suggested refreshments, and, going downstairs, presently reappeared with a dishful of cookies and a couple of apples. And Emerson was forced to agree with Pee-wee’s pronouncement that there was no likelihood at all of him starving.